Page 410 - war-and-peace

in Mademoiselle Bourienne’s head at the very time she was
talking to Anatole about Paris. It was not calculation that
guided her (she did not even for a moment consider what
she should do), but all this had long been familiar to her,
and now that Anatole had appeared it just grouped itself
around him and she wished and tried to please him as much
as possible.
The little princess, like an old war horse that hears the
trumpet, unconsciously and quite forgetting her condition,
prepared for the familiar gallop of coquetry, without any
ulterior motive or any struggle, but with naive and light-
hearted gaiety.
Although in female society Anatole usually assumed the
role of a man tired of being run after by women, his vanity
was flattered by the spectacle of his power over these three
women. Besides that, he was beginning to feel for the pretty
and provocative Mademoiselle Bourienne that passionate
animal feeling which was apt to master him with great sud-
denness and prompt him to the coarsest and most reckless
actions.
After tea, the company went into the sitting room and
Princess Mary was asked to play on the clavichord. Ana-
tole, laughing and in high spirits, came and leaned on his
elbows, facing her and beside Mademoiselle Bourienne.
Princess Mary felt his look with a painfully joyous emotion.
Her favorite sonata bore her into a most intimately poetic
world and the look she felt upon her made that world still
more poetic. But Anatole’s expression, though his eyes were
fixed on her, referred not to her but to the movements of

410 War and Peace